Now that’s a bad Photoshop comp! I mean really, who would believe the girl and the sandwich were shot at the same time? The lights totally different. Oh wait, I think there’s something else going on here… is she supposed to be ?…..

Gawker – Eating a Burger King ‘Super Seven Incher’ Is Just Like Giving a Blow Job – Burger King.

I’m what’s known as a location photographer. Basically, it means I come to you. I don’t have a studio and would be suicidal inside of a month if I had to work indoors all the time. That said, I’ve lately been forcing down thoughts of renting space, something to call my “studio”. It sounds pretentious to me though. And it’s also expensive. Here in Calgary, commercial real estate types have been inhaling whippets by the case load while charging around town in their Bugatti’s and Jags, tossing the empties at street people while yelling “double the price” into their diamond encrusted Blackberries. This means for even a busy photographer like myself, I have to have a lot of demand for studio space in order to justify the cost of rent.

Having said that, I really like doing location work. I just finished a series of about 15 different portraits of people for a local magazine and am winding up to do an even larger spread for the August issue of the same pub. This means I’ve been out to locations all over the city, setting up and shooting interesting, compelling images of people in their own work environments. Doing this effectively means that you have to have a lighting and set up system that is portable (check) and that you can scout a location effectively in order to find the right place to take the picture (well, check). This is where the challenge comes in for location photographers. Studio shooters just roll out the seamless or repaint the cove and they’re in business, props, a little makeup and that’s a wrap. On location, there’s a host of potential issues to deal with and, in some ways, doing location work allows you to be come a better photographer by throwing challenges at you that you wouldn’t normally encounter in a studio environment. Challenges that you still have to overcome in order to make a successful image.

This morning, I went downtown to meet with a couple subjects for another shoot. They wanted to do the images in a local park, for a host of reasons I won’t bore you with, this was not going to work well in terms of making a really good image. Weather was a factor but, backgrounds were an issue as well. I suggested we postpone until tomorrow night and I set off to find a much more suitable location, with the potential to make an image they’ll like. After an hour or so of driving to various spots I’ve had in my mental inventory of locations around Calgary, I found what I was looking for, called the subject and set it up. The lesson here is that you’re much better off finding a location that works with your subject and intent instead of trying to make a shitty location conform to your vision.

On another note, in the spirit of shameless self promotion, I now have a Facebook page exclusively for onewordphotography HERE so, go sign up and become a fan. I’ll be posting images form other shoots from time to time and the content will be much more image oriented and much less ranting and raving by me. Hey, we all need a little balance in life right?

Actually, I need more like ten.

I do a lot of people portraits in the run of a week, pipeline workers in the field, drillers on the rig, CEO’s at the head of the boardroom table, recipients of aid at a homeless shelter, you name it, I’ve probably shot it. What’s interesting to me is the various reactions people have to being in front of the camera. I’ve always maintained that everyone likes to say they hate having their picture taken but, everyone secretly loves it (except me of course). That said, once in a while, I run into someone (or someones staff) who find the whole prospect of having their picture taken to be a complete pain in the arse and certainly not worth their time. Without fail, they go out of their way to make this clear to me. Why, I don’t know. My job is to make not just a picture but, a nice picture, or an interesting picture or something other than a point and shoot record of the person. Otherwise, the person paying the bills will wonder why they’re paying me the big fees and not just doing it themselves with their combination tv remote / garage opener / 50 megapixel phone camera combo device from Costco (2 for $99 until this Friday only, some conditions apply).

What some people simply don’t get is, this takes time. At least it does for me and anybody else who practices a trade that requires some artistic skills beyond the level of teeth flossing. I shot a job recently, portrait of a person for a magazine. Was told I had 2 minutes!, 2 minutes! Arrived an hour early, set up, worked the shot, worked the light, worked the angles. And the whole time, I worried that 2 minutes was not even enough time to shake hands and bullshit about weather before getting down to business. And I was right, it wasn’t. The pictures sucked. When it was time to wrap, the subject asked me if I got it and I said no. I said the pictures were weak, unflattering and not something I felt at all good about. The subject asked why and I said because two minutes is not enough time to do any job well. “So what happens?” they asked. I said “you’re not going to look very good, but, hey, we’re on time, maybe you’ll look better in the next magazine spread”. Suddenly, time was made available, schedules were cleared, things slowed down, the subject relaxed, the staff made voodoo dolls of me and stuck pins into it in the corner, glares and dirty looks were cast and a good picture was made. A flattering picture, a successful one, of someone who looks like they enjoy having their picture taken.

No one would ever tell their heart surgeon “you’ve got two minutes asshole, make it snappy”. I get that good pictures are not life and death but then again, I can certianly do this in under two minutes:

I like silhouettes, sometimes, they feel like the photographic equivalent of cheating, sort of like using duct tape and painting over it instead of getting the hole fixed. Don’t like the foreground? no problem, silhouette. Equipment’s dirty. silhouette. Models are ugly? yep, silhouette. Lots of times, silhouettes fall into the “fail” category and that’s because you need to be able to include some recognizable elements in the shot in order to tell enough of the story that you can paint in the detail any way you like. Add in some sunrise light and bobsyeruncle! In the case of this shot, you may know nothing about industry or oil and gas or drilling for oil but, none of that matters because this shot should say “working hard in some kind of industry” and that’s all I needed.

In the case of this shot, sunrise was 4AM! 8 hours north of Calgary, the sun goes down late and comes up early. My assistant and I worked until sunset the night before (midnight!), grabbed one cold beer in the hotel bar and slept three hours before the alarm made it’s awful noise telling me the best light of the day was minutes away. I’ve been on the road shooting a bunch of different jobs for a bunch of different industrial and oil and gas clients now for about 2 weeks and now that I’m home, I’m locked in the office for the rest of the weekend editing 10,000 image files for delivery next week(!) Back to work.

Have you ever had someone say something like “Do this one for cheap and there will be a ton of future work for you”? Of course you have, have you ever tried it on anyone else? Probably not. Because this is what would happen.

Spent a couple days last week shooting some advertising work for a client who is in the drilling service business. We rented a drilling rig to use as a location to create the shots the client wanted and on a break, the guys who man the rig were tripping some pipe to prepare for the next shot and I grabbed this on the fly. Tweaked it in Photoshop and we end up with this cartoon like effect that I love, it adds drama and makes the scene look “heroic”. Over lunch, I tweaked some files for the client this way and they loved the effect enough to start talking about using it for their next billboard campaign! Make people look great in photos, the client’s product look fantastic and the company look good and your phone will ring regulalrly. Cake!

I’ve seen some bad family portraits but OMG!! Now I gotta go wipe off the coffee I just spit all over my monitor:

http://awkwardfamilyphotos.com/

So, I like to fancy myself a well organized, “on the ball” sort of guy. In fact, if you want to run your own business, you pretty much need to be. Of course, I know a few that aren’t but, then again, they still live at home so, there you go.

One thing I have always made a habit of doing is showing up early. For everything. As early as I can manage. I’d much rather have time for a coffee and a newspaper than to race to a meeting or shoot, show up panicked and sweating, looking like I ran a marathon in lead boots. Most of the time, I end up walking around the block, sitting in my car reading or returning calls or having that coffee. Basically wasting time. But, every once in a while this habit pays off. Yesterday, I had scheduled to meet the subject of a magazine story to be shot for the cover, at a local coffee shop. He’s a runner and the deal was, we’d go to some of the local trails and photograph him running in his Boston Marathon getup. I decided I’d like to be there about 8:30, grab a coffee and scout the location in advance so that when the subject arrived, he didn’t have to sit around being bored watching me wrestle with C-Stands.

Great, we find the perfect spot, grab a coffee and, for whatever reason, I decide I need something out of my truck. I pop the back and BOOM! nuthin’ but dust kitties and a chirping cricket. NO GEAR! NONE!, WTF?!

My mind races backwards to 45 minutes ago when I left the house. I got ready and went down to the garage, packed up the light and put it by the garage door, dragged a couple of Tenba’s full of stands over and opened the garage door. Then I went upstairs, grabbed my camera bag and then out to the truck that was parked on the street. Normally, I’d swing around back to the garage but this time, not so much. I was up the night before until about 2AM, thanks to a long flight from Denver and was pretty groggy and just drove off.

Now I had 30 minutes to run back to the house, load up and come back. I made it with about 60 seconds to spare and showed up to meet the subject, red faced, sweating, and looking like I just ran the lead Boot Marathon. Sometime it pays to be early, better yet, it pays to be organized.

Things were a little slow around the onewordphotography bunker this weekend and I’ve always wanted to take pictures of my motorcycle so, I thought this might be a good time to try the H3D from Hasselblad and create some files to use in an experiment with a technique I’ve wanted to try in Photoshop at the same time. Then I thought, “maybe I’ll kill a bunch of birds at once here and create a video for my next corporate newsletter”.  So, I set up the time lapse, did the entire shoot over the course of the weekend and put it all together. The end of the video shows the finished shot.

What did I learn?, setting up all that crap and taking it down again is a lot of work if you’re not getting paid to do it. When it comes to personal work, I’m strictly an “available light” photographer.

Enjoy.

Landlocked province in Western Canada desperately seeking scenic stretch of English coastline for addition to it’s list of scenic tourist attractions.

Currently has magnificent Rocky Mountains, miles of open prairie, Banff, Jasper, that train that runs through the Rockies, Kananaskis country, Cypress Hills, thousands of lakes, a huge mall, vast tracts of northern boreal forest,  and more Provincial and National parks than you can shake a stick at.

All we need now is a beach in the UK to promote our Province to the world.

Click the link for the story: globeandmail.com: Photo hasn’t been a trip to the beach for Alberta rebranding campaign.

This is wrong on so many levels. I’m speechless.